Snap Happy
Snap Happy by Taniwha
Jayrem Records & shameless ! promotions, March 2009
TANIWHA: A fabulous monster supposed to reside in deep water. A chief, a prodigy, the human body. A bold, poetic figure...(from A dictionary of the Maori language, H W Williams, 1971)
This new album from well-known singer-songwriters Hinemoana Baker and Christine White features intimate alt.country ballads, hooky pop-songs and laid-back Māori language reggae. There’s even some folktronica flavours courtesy of their Casiotone MT-65, and an entirely new instrument made out of a Black & Decker workbench.
Snap Happy is welcomed as a wonderful venue for two enormously talented vocalist-wordsmith-composers to blend and bend their own and others’ expectations. As the duo Taniwha, these two accomplished soloists bring a new ‘power of two’ to this latest live-in-studio adventure.
Full of heart and at times very moving, the songs on Snap Happy deliver a brave, delicate and delightful romp, full of momentum, through many musical moods.
Hinemoana Baker (left) and Christine White (right) perform as TANIWHA at WOMAD Taranaki 09
Fresh from WOMAD Taranaki, Taniwha plan a launch at the New Zealand School of Music on 23 May, 2009, and a launch tour later in the year. The Taniwha will be appearing in an unexpected location near you any moment…so be unafraid.
Be very unafraid.
Taniwha – Rhythm, Rhyme and Recycling
Taniwha is a Paekakariki phenomenon, a duo making sweet music with anything and everything they have to hand. As singer-songwriters in a folk/pop tradition, their guitars and beautifully woven voices are still their mainstay. But as all artists do, they've been experimenting. Many of their recent instruments have been acquired from Trash Palace, their local recycling station in Tawa. They are particularly thrilled to have acquired their Casiotone keyboard for $1.00, and their cheese grater, oven grills and steel wine rack for free.
Christine from TANIWHA playing the workbench at WOMAD Taranaki O9
And what use would musicians have for sundry kitchen utensils on stage? Well…The real taniwha in the band is an instrument Christine has built out of a Black & Decker WorkMate (Registered Trade Mark). The ambient sounds you hear in ‘Day After' and ‘Dumb White Girl’ are produced by this fabulous monster, inspired by sonic artist Eric Leonardson’s ‘Springboard’, which is made out of a modified zimmer frame.
TANIWHA: Workbench and other tools - oven racks large and small, cheese grater, wine bottle rack
The taniwha’s secret lies in a steel plate bolted to the workbench’s surface,to which are attached a few contact microphones. The microphones amplify very small sounds and the soft draw of a cello bow into the groans of icebreaking ships, the clicks and sirens of whales, the roar of industrial machinery or the haunting ache of a koauau or a putatara.
Cello bow on wine rack on steel plate on contact mic on workbench
When the duo perform live their sound engineer Andrew Dalziel helps keep the workbench’s massive dynamic range in hand.
Sound engineer Andrew Dalziel Naked workbench
‘We take a lot of pleasure introducing the taniwha to audiences. It’s about inviting people to listen differently to their surroundings, and to the sounds of ordinary daily objects. When we performed at WOMAD we gave the ducks on the lake a solo.’
Cheesegrater close-up
Both artists have very much enjoyed the collaboration involved in making this album, and in forming their new duo. The production decisions for their debut album Snap Happy have revolved around wanting to capture as much of a live take for every track as possible.
‘We’ve made several studio albums as soloists,’ says Hinemoana. ‘We both wanted to make something different, to go for the performance rather than the perfection. What this means in practice is that we’d go into the studio and do several takes of a song, performing it live, with all the microphones open to all instruments and voices. That way we’d be limited with how much prettying up of things we could do afterwards. And we wanted those limitations – this album was about prioritising the feel of a take rather than spending hours on a computer later trying to make things perfect.’
buy 'snap happy' back to news page listen to tracks on taniwha myspace page
"Snap Happy" Taniwha